Dave discusses how Flotek scaled its finance and billing operations from a simple setup (a bookkeeper and a director overseeing finances) to a more structured team while growing rapidly through acquisitions. He explains their philosophy that client-facing billing is part of service delivery, with SLAs and a “wow” mindset to protect relationships and reduce friction from invoice errors. The conversation covers challenges of cost-of-sale reconciliation amid inconsistent vendor billing, the need to accept imperfect acquisition data, and using standard cost models and monthly margin monitoring (with more precision where margins are tighter, like Microsoft). They emphasise simplifying vendors/products, building processes and controls across sales, projects, and finance, capturing historical billing data, and balancing automation with necessary manual review. Dave notes they reached £18M revenue in 3.5 years and wishes he had hired earlier, stressing upfront investment in scalable systems, culture, and pricing for long-term growth.
00:00 MSP Finance at Scale
00:50 Early Acquisition Setup
01:47 Billing as Customer Service
05:24 Wow Factor and Trust
08:17 Cost Reconciliation Reality
10:14 Standard Costs and Margins
14:45 Automation and AI Tools
17:39 Limiting Complexity
19:53 Team Size and Reporting Depth
23:24 Sales Ops to Finance Handoff
27:46 Lessons from Rapid Growth
29:32 Closing and Contact
Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
Connect with Dave Middleton on LinkedIn by clicking here – https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-j-middleton/
Connect with Daniel Welling on LinkedIn by clicking here – https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielwelling/
Connect with Adam Morris on LinkedIn by clicking here – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamcmorris/
Visit The MSP Finance Team website, simply click here –https://www.mspfinanceteam.com/
MSP Glossary: MSP Finance Glossary Explained | MSP Finance Team
We look forward to catching up with you on the next one. Stay tuned!